Thursday, January 07, 2016

Highrises, gentrification, and "a car-free paradise"

Individually, there may be economic logic behind each of these developments. But local residents fret about the overcrowding of public schools, strains on public transit, the loss of emergency medical services and more waves of gentrification even as City Hall lacks an effective master plan to coordinate growth. Instead, there are just piecemeal, opportunistic proposals. City leaders would be wise to guarantee that additional schools, parks and other sites and services that neighborhood residents actually want are provided in return for the increases in density or other changes the government seeks.

About San Francisco? Nope, it's about New York City.

Here's a rosy account in San Francisco magazine (San Francisco 2020) of this kind of development in SF. On transportation:

Environmental groups see green in high-density urban living because the more people in a city center, the less traffic and global-warming-causing exhaust in the region as a whole. Hence, the plan for a three-part, multibillion dollar public transportation program that would turn this part of the city into a car-free paradise.

Here is what’s supposed to happen: Commuters to Silicon Valley will sell their cars once Caltrans extends the South Bay–San Francisco rail line from Fourth and King into the new transit center. Mission Bay residents will use the light rail running along Third Street between the financial district and Bayview–Hunters Point or the subway linking Mission Bay, SoMa, the financial district, and Chinatown. The high-speed train connecting the city to Los Angeles and Sacramento will allow those who fled to the Central Valley or beyond San Jose to come back to work or shop and leave their cars at home.